CTB Knew of Problems Earlier, Indiana Districts Say

CTB/McGraw-Hill knew of possible problems with one of its
standardized tests several months earlier than the company previously
acknowledged and eight months before its customers were notified,
school officials in Indiana said last week.

Indiana was one of six states affected by the errors that skewed
percentile rankings for students who took the company's TerraNova
battery of tests--and that caused thousands of New York City students
to be mistakenly assigned to summer school or held back a grade.

McGraw-Hill, the publishing company that owns CTB/McGraw Hill, said
last month that the testmaker first learned of the irregularities late
last spring when testing directors in New York City and Tennessee
voiced concerns. ("Error Affects Test
Results in Six States," Sept. 29, 1999.)

But district administrators in Indiana provided documents last week
showing that they had raised questions about the scores as far back as
January. The documents show that the testing company investigated the
tests, corrected some errors, and then assured state officials and
local superintendents that the results were sound--words the company
had to take back in September when the new problems were made
public.

"As far as I'm concerned, they [CTB officials] lack integrity," said
Thomas Fowler-Finn, the superintendent of the Fort Wayne schools and
one of several local officials who questioned the results early on.
"Even if they correct their errors, if they're not dealing with us
honestly it's a real concern."

David M. Taggart, the president of Monterey, Calif.-based CTB, said
the company was not trying to cover up its mistakes when it assured
Indiana administrators that all was well.

Though CTB officials identified a problem and corrected it, they did
not probe deep enough, he explained.

"We did an analysis and came to some conclusions, but we did not
discover at the time that anything was wrong with the calibration," Mr.
Taggart said last week. "Boy, I wish we had found this back then," he
added. "It would have made everything easier for everyone, and I do
apologize to the people of Indiana."

The glitches made public last month affected the percentile
rankings, but not the raw scores, of students taking the TerraNova
tests in Nevada, South Carolina, and Wisconsin as well as in Indiana
and New York City. Officials in Tennessee caught the mistakes before
results were sent to schools and students there.

The mistakes stemmed from a data-processing error that occurred when
company researchers were translating student scores to percentile
rankings, which show how students stack up national "norms"--meaning
their peers from other states.

Protests to State

The problems Mr. Fowler-Finn of Fort Wayne and others identified in
January also revolved around the norm-referenced results.

By Feb. 17, the company had analyzed the numbers and concluded that
its researchers had used the wrong norming table for the
reading-comprehension portion of the test. In a report to state
officials, CTB said the mistake affected rankings only for that section
of the test, in grades 6, 8, and 10.

But Mr. Fowler-Finn, an outspoken critic of Indiana's testing
program, and his district's testing director, John N. Kline, were still
dissatisfied. In letters and calls to state officials, they protested
that the 3rd grade results continued to look suspicious. Their calls in
March for an independent investigation went unanswered.

"He was saying things, and CTB was saying things, and there wasn't
any reason to doubt CTB at that point," said Stewart Huffman, a
communications specialist for the Indiana education department. The
company had, for example, already rescored the tests at its own expense
and mailed out new results.

Mr. Taggart said CTB did not take a second look at the scores until
hearing from New York and Tennessee testing officials in May or
June.

Audit Under Way

But angry Indiana officials said last week that the test-maker
should have notified them and other customers by at least that
point.

"I think it would have been bad enough had the error been brought to
our attention immediately," said David O. Dickson, a member of the
Indiana board of education. "But it was compounded by the fact that it
was not brought to our attention promptly, and we had to read about it
on the front page of the paper."

Company officials say it took several more months to pinpoint the
cause of the problem. They notified the Indiana state superintendent,
Suellen Reed, of their findings on Sept. 10.

Vol. 19, Issue 8, Page 3

Published in Print: October 20, 1999, as CTB Knew of Problems Earlier, Indiana Districts Say

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